Honest opinions on school holidays please

[Helpaladyoutplease]

I've been teaching for 14 years and really want to leave. Job isn't enjoyable any more, bored of the groundhog day nature of it now and fed up with what it's become. Have moved schools and year groups several times which has confirmed it's the job i'm sick of. The only thing keeping me is the holidays. So my question is, how much of a nightmare is it to really manage holiday childcare? Bad enough to stay in teaching for another 6 years until youngest is at secondary? I have a husband and his concern is, if both parents have to juggle childcare between them, when do you ever get to spend any of the holidays together as a family? One week a year in Devon?! Would really appreciate honest advice, esp from ex teachers with primary kids, but any feedback welcome really!

Why not go in to tutoring and choose your own hours?

It depends what you do instead. There are jobs for example that are still education focused so may still be term time only or are quieter in the holidays so perhaps more flexibility.
Often they involve a pay cut though.

Most people I know have to juggle holidays between them but many have a parent who is part time or heavy help from grandparents.

Ex teacher here. There are a lot of holidays and unless you have really helpful gps holiday and sports clubs are very expensive if you need it 5 days a week ( and the times don’t always work).

I’m a teacher in the same position. I’m waiting for two more years until the youngest is in secondary. No advice just solidarity.

Me and DH have worked full time since DD was 9 months, holidays are a pain but not unmanageable, you just have to factor the cost over the whole year and save for it rather than absorbing it all in the summer.

We had 13 weeks of school holiday. I get 7 weeks leave, DH hugest 5 so that’s 12 weeks total, we had 1 week together at Xmas and 1 week together for a summer holiday so that’s meant we had a total of 10 weeks covered and 3 weeks left. We would each hold back a few days for emergency cover like sickness or school closures or boiler breaking so we would plan for 4 weeks of holiday club.

There is a really really good holiday club near us, it’s expensive but fantastic because it’s all outdoor stuff like kayaking, climbing, bushcraft, archery etc and it runs 8-6 so actually covers work hours which most don’t. Most are 10-3. It costs £55 a day though so just over £1000 a year. She would do a week over Easter and 3 weeks over summer broken up so a week on, a week off.

It's absolutely manageable if you're both public sector for example. DH and I get 7 weeks each, plus all the bank holidays, plus some flexi days, about 10 a year each. Throw in holiday clubs, child swaps, grandparents if you're lucky, and it's more than manageable, I even get to take the odd annual leave day just for me when the dc are in school.

I can't imagine being a teacher, I take my hat off to you. It must be such a hard job, especially if your heart isn't in it, 6 years is a LONG time.

Thankyou all so much, really appreciate you taking time to answer x

I would look at holiday club provision near you. I’m in London commuter land and there’s a few options doing 8-6/8-530 although they’re not cheap. My friend in the Midlands only has options that are 9.30-3 which doesn’t work with needing to be in the office 2-3 days a week.

I'm about to change my hours for other reasons but a silver lining is not tearing my hair out at finding childcare for inset days at the start of September when there’s no clubs and neither of us can get a/l authorised.

What about switching to an admin role in a school? School admin here and it’s low stress compared to teaching, I get all the holidays off and it doesn’t pay too badly all things considered compared to my last admin role which was full time.

I have every Monday off, partner Fridays as our youngest is in nursery. Works out on my slightly condensed hours I get 5.5 weeks holiday and I buy another 5 days on top. This covers 6.5 weeks. Partner is self employed but takes two weeks over Christmas and New Year so that covers that period. The rest is covered by holiday clubs for the Tuesday to Thursday we need to cover. Pretty standard set up in my circle when both parents work full time and don’t have family to help. We take off around 3 weeks off a year together. These are also standard 8-5 jobs though - shift work can even help or complicate dependent on your situation.

I don’t find it difficult at all. I got a lot of annual leave in my job (probably 7-8 weeks if you added it all up). Dh is self employed so lots of flexibility. We’d use a bit of holiday club as well.

Honestly, we don’t really take big family holidays. We have a farm and animals, so packing up for 2 weeks in Greece is nigh on impossible. We do little trips away, camping at least one weekend a month for probably 6 months a year. Dh and I take them away separately. We spend loads of time together as it is, so don’t really need several big holidays a year. But the reason we spend loads of time together is because we have flexible jobs where we can already prioritise family life. We get quality time together all the time, so don’t need to pack it into the school holidays.